Uncategorized on Félix Tréguer

France’s police bill: surveillance for the long haul

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 14:47:30 +0000

First published on about:intel.

The French government seems not to be interested in tackling systemic police violence. Instead, one of the most defining features of Macron’s presidency lies in the fast-paced expansion of state surveillance powers. A case in point is Parliament’s impending adoption of the “Bill on Global Security”, which shows the current administration is a leading representative of the rising wave of authoritarian-liberalism currently sweeping Europe.

On 4 December 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron gave a rare interview on police violence. It was less than two weeks after music producer Michel Zecler, a 41 year-old black man, was arrested by police officers after being brutally evicted from his own studio and assaulted. It was about two weeks after the Paris police ruthlessly dismantled a camp-ground of migrants in the French capital, and a mere few days after more than 130,000 people took to the streets across the country to march against the Global Security Bill – a piece of legislation intending to ramp up police powers and legalise new surveillance technologies.

Data Politics is out

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 11:51:32 +0000

A new book on « Data Politics » is fresh out. Edited by professor Didier Bigo, Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert, it is part of Routledge Serie in International Political Sociology.

I contributed a chapter titled « Seeing Like Big Tech: Security assemblages, technology, and the future of state bureaucracy ». Here is the abstract:

This chapter looks at post-Snowden contention between US technology companies – firms like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple – and the security field to reflect on the evolution of state arrangements monitoring and controlling communications. Modern statecraft has always depended on measures and metrics that could make the world legible and governable. In the age of Big Data, the infrastructures, data-processing techniques and abstractions produced by large, public-facing technology firms are now seen as the most suited to govern the digitalised world. Through negotiations processes and power struggles involving states, technology companies and other actors, security assemblages tasked with surveillance and censorship evolve towards privatisation and automation, and away from the rule of law. While pointing to the growing influence of Big Data governmentality across the security and wider bureaucratic fields, we conclude by taking stock of the failures of strategies aimed at decoupling the growing sophistication of computing and the intensification of power relationships.

"A new figure of power is emerging before our eyes"

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 09:48:10 +0000

In French only.

Je reproduis ici un entretien avec le journaliste Clément Pouré de Motherboard.

Motherboard – Début janvier, Emmanuel Macron annonçait un projet de loi sur les fake news. Faut-il s’inquiéter d’une éventuelle censure ?

Félix Tréguer – Le projet d’Emmanuel Macron reste assez flou à ce stade, mais les mesures envisagées semblent cibler l’utilisation des systèmes de contenus sponsorisés sur les plateformes et seraient limitées aux seules périodes électorales.

Gaps and bumps in the political history of the internet

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 07:54:38 +0000

I have a new paper out at the Internet Policy Review. It is based on a personal experience but it is also meant as an introduction to the political historiography of the Internet (the full list of references is here, and an extended version of the bibliography is available in this bibtex file).

Le coût écologique d’internet est trop lourd, il faut penser un internet low-tech

Tue, 30 May 2017 07:05:37 +0000

Le combat pour une informatique émancipatrice échoue le plus souvent à expliquer les effroyables coûts écologiques et humains du numérique. Un internet low-tech est nécessaire afin de nous émanciper des sphères technocratiques et industrielles.

avec Gaël Trouvé. Tribune publiée sur Reporterre

L’an dernier, un contributeur de la revue anglo-saxonne <i>Phrack,</i> publication phare de la mouvance hacker, appelait de ses vœux la constitution d’un front <i>« hacker-luddite »</i> pour lutter contre deux fléaux qui entravent selon lui la contribution de l’informatique à l’émancipation : les systèmes informatiques fermés, conçus par leurs designers pour empêcher toute appropriation singulière et créative par leurs utilisateurs ; ceux fondés sur des logiques propagandistes et manipulatoires qui, notamment à travers la publicité, détournent l’attention humaine à des fins de contrôle social et de profits [<a class="external" title="Anonyme. « Hacker Luddites », Phrack, le 6 mai 2016." href="https://reporterre.net/Le-cout-ecologique-d-internet-est-trop-lourd-il-faut-penser-un-internet-low#nb1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1</a>].

De la dépêche secrète aux Crypto Wars (brève histoire politique du chiffrement)

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 13:32:50 +0000

Ce texte a été publié dans le numéro 365 de La Chronique, le magazine d’Amnesty International (avril 2017).

L’acuité des débats contemporains autour du droit au chiffrement de nos communications et données numériques pourrait faire oublier qu’il renvoie en réalité d’un droit ancien. Il est en effet indéfectiblement lié au secret des correspondances, lui-même protégé depuis le milieu du XVIIIème siècle. Quant à la cryptologie – la « science du secret » –, elle est un art plus ancien encore. Et contrairement aux idées reçues, il semble qu’elle ait de tout temps fait l’objet d’usages triviaux et populaires. Certes, ces derniers furent longtemps marginaux, puisque l’écriture fut pendant longtemps essentiellement réservée aux élites. Mais l’un des plus vieux documents connus adoptant un système de codage est une tablette en argile datant de l’Antiquité retrouvée en Irak, dans laquelle le potier avait dissimulé ses techniques de fabrication en jouant sur les consonnes.

Internet Is a Fundamental Right, French Constitutional Court Says

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:13:54 +0000

Yesterday at 5P.M, the French Constitutional Council – in charge of checking the conformity of legislation with the Constitution – rendered a groundbreaking decision regarding the highly controversial “three strikes law” (or graduated response), passed last month by Parliament to fight illegal downloading.

The law established a penalty amounting to the suspension of downloaders’ internet connection without appropriate judicial safeguards. Yet, the Constitutional Council affirmed in very strong words that under no circumstance should people’s freedom of expression and communication be denied by a non-judiciary authority (in this case, and independent administrative agency, which does not guarantee a fair trial). According to Article 66 of the French Constitution, the judiciary authority is the “guardian of individual liberty” and as such is the only one authorized to pronounce sentences infringing on fundamental liberties, which are at stake in this law as the Council asserts.

The Political Economy of the Web 2.0

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:50:56 +0000

This article by John Naughton, professor at the Open University, is one of the most comprehensive ten-page articles you can get on new media. Naughton very well describes some of the characteristics of what he calls the “emerging media ecosystem”: user-generated content, cooperation and sharing.

Referring to Neil Postman, he draws a relevant analogy between the media and ecology. The media ecosystem is extremely historically unstable. Just like newspapers had to find new formats with the advent of television, TV networks will have to adapt to the arrival of participatory media. This is a similar argument to the one Henry Jenkins makes in another article I already mentioned.

Could the Internet End Up Killing the Public Sphere?

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:25:50 +0000

A few weeks ago, the French Journal Le Débat published a compelling piece by Benjamin Loveluck entitled « Internet: Toward a Radical Democracy?« . The author, who is writing a Ph.D thesis on « the hypermodern individual and the genealogy of contemporary media regime__s” (sic), successfully locates the recent developments of the internet within the history of liberal-democracies. He demonstrates that although the internet is based on humanistic and democratic ideals, it could also undermine some of the very tenets of our societies, such as the positive role the media plays in organizing the public sphere (which is entangled with any sound democracy and dependent on the free circulation of information).

Facing the Crisis, the European Union Should Imitate Obama’s Reliance on New Technologies to Bring About Change

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:13:29 +0000

Determined to act swiftly to pass an $825 billion stimulus package, US President Barack Obama used his weekly address (on a revamped whitehouse.gov website) to give more details about this recovery plan. As it stands now, the proposal includes public spending programs in three high-tech areas :

computerization of medical records;
creation of smarter, high-tech enhanced electrical grids;
expansion of high speed internet lines in undeserved areas.

House Democrats and Obama’s economic team, who conjunctly designed the stimulus package, see these investments in digital technologies are an enabler for economic gross.

Regulation : The Internet is not TV

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:05:12 +0000

As some telecommunication companies slowly turn themselves into producers and distributors of media content, new issues arise for competition regulators. Public officials have hinted at several ways of dealing with this issue. On the one hand, market regulators are keen on maintaining a clear differentiation between these two sectors. On the other hand, some government officials seem willing to accept greater interconnections between them. For example, France is considering merging two agencies that regulate the media (TV and radio) sector and the telecom sector as well as extending audiovisual regulation to the internet. However, such a move would probably turn out to be detrimental to both the role that the media play in the democratic process as well as technological innovation.

Copyright Gone Wrong

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 09:33:10 +0000

At the beginning of this year, the head of the European Commission’s Internal Market and Services Directorate General Charlie McCreevy announced his plan to extend copyright terms for performers and phonogram producers from 50 years today to 95 years (1). The Commission advances the argument that many works from ageing musicians dating back to the 1950’s are about to fall into the public domain. As the Commission proposal explains:

The Freedom to Digitalize Revolutionary Powers

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:09:23 +0000

In On Liberty (1859), philosopher John Stuart Mill reflects on the potential coercion that could result from democracy and more especially from what Alexi De Tocqueville called the “tyranny of the majority”.
In this work, Mill formulates a very convincing plea in favor of free speech. According to him, only by discussion can we test the validity of people’s beliefs and only by dialectic can we successfully undermine false and dangerous ones. And if a given opinion contains some truth, by preventing someone from expressing it we deny society the possibility to benefit from it. Besides, for Mill, the diversity of opinions is valuable in that is allows for greater confrontation between divergent voices and a thus improved public debate. This is something worth reminding for those who still doubt of the positive effect of the internet in the democratic process.

European Parliament Rejects France’s Graduated Response

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 06:21:39 +0000

The French legislative bill aimed at granting a public agency the right to suspend people’s internet connection if they are suspected of copyright infringement has been turned down by the European Parliament, which resumed session earlier this week.

Voting on the telecom package – a piece of legislation that regulates the EU electronic communication sector – the Parliament adopted by an overwhelming majority (574 to 73) amendment 138 tabled by Guy Bono, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Zuzana Roithová and others that stipulates that members states should be

If We Could Free Our Culture

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:32:01 +0000

I just finished Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture (2004) and it has made me angry. A law professor specialized in intellectual property, Lessig demonstrates that we are caught in a dangerous, reactionary discourse about intellectual property in the Net era. His sincere advocacy for a freer society deconstructs the key elements of the debate on copyright and gives a desirable sense of perspective on this issue. Here a few elements worth retaining:

Taylorism vs. Googlism

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:01:31 +0000

I talked about Nicholas Carr’s article a few days ago. According to his piece (Is Google Making Us Stupid?) the web is affecting our cognitive abilities. We are now fed with tons information but seldom sit and reflect about them; we google things but rarely research or memorize them anymore. Carr argues that this constant flipping through is dispossessing us from complex reasoning. He then draws a parallel between taylorism, where the human becomes an instrumental part of a mechanical process of industrial production, and the way we growingly rely on Google to think.

How the Web Is Changing Us

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:36:20 +0000

A few weeks ago, American writer Nicholas Carr wrote a controversial article in the Atlantic Monthly. In his piece “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” he elaborated on an interesting hypothesis regarding the cognitive consequences of the web. Carr, a well-known critic of technological utopianism asked whether it could be that using the web slowly rewired people’s neuronal circuitry. He explains:

For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet (…). A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’ reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link.

Regulating Privacy in the Online World

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:55:41 +0000

Things are moving forward on the privacy front.
In April, the so-called “Group 29”, an advisory body to the European Commission on privacy and public liberties matters, issued a memo in which it analyzed the activity of data-mining internet companies. More specifically, it sought to establish whether they respected the European regulatory framework which is composed of two directives:
– the data protection directive, adopted in 1995, that ranks privacy as a fundamental right and establishes a set of general principal regarding personal data protection in the European Union;
– the ePrivacy directive, adopted in 2002, that specifically targets electronic communications (for instance, it states that users must be able to refuse cookies).

The Political Economy of Internet Search Engines

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:25:42 +0000

This article by Elizabeth Van Couvering, from the London School of Economics, is now four years old and thus allows to put in perspective the evolution of web search engines, which have become key players of the information society. She makes a few interesting points:

The author classifies search engines a****s media, saying that their business model is very similar to that traditional media of mass communication such as television or newspapers. They too provide content (searches), trying to attract the widest audience – or traffic – in order to place advertising, which constitutes a major share of their revenues.
Then she analyzes the rise of one innovative feature of search engines compared to traditional media, namely search-rela****ted ads, which are revolutionizing the advertisement industry. Behavioral targeted ads have now taken much bigger proportions and are not limited to web searches anymore (with now a whole variety of data mining methods). This innovation has boosted internet advertising (+25% in 2007) and is eventually destabilizing traditional media, since advertisers tend to transfer their budgets online.
Finally, the article examines how the “objectivity” of search algorithms is being tricked by search spamming, and discusses the incidence of other defects embedded in search engines on the public sphere. Indeed search engines are the gatekeepers of the web and it is therefore crucial that they don’t bypass part of it. The Chinese version of Google for instance doesn’t provide users with satisfactory results with respect to democratic standards. For that reason the relevance of searches, even though its definition is relative, should represent a key point of the debate on search engines.

However, four years later the public debate about Google and the like tends to be less focused on their ability to provide users with inclusive index and comprehensive searches. Today, the major issue search providers face is that of privacy and it is the field where regulatory attempts are the most perceptible.
Does that mean we are now totally satisfied with ability of search engines to come up with unbiased content, that is to say to genuinely reflect what is going on the web?

MySpace: A Revolutionary Link Between the People and the Cultural Industries (2/2)

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:04:19 +0000

What makes MySpace unique, along with other sites based on the same concept, such as Last.fm, is their unique and revolutionary service of popular culture broadcaster (so far, mainly music) relying on the technology of the Web 2.0. They link social networking and self-representation, and the prominent place of popular culture in identity formation and social interaction. However, these new services greatly destabilize the traditional grounds on which the cultural industries are organized, especially in terms copyright and licenses. This is a phase of transition for the cultural industries and while very few people contest the interest of social networks for the creative industries, intense debates are going on to try to reach a point of equilibrium between the different actors. MySpace in particular has the function of the aggregator of cultural products but also encourages the publishing of user-generated content, of which legal status is not very clear (public/private domain). Also, users now have the technologies to easily express their creativity by editing and remixing pieces of popular culture, a practice which poses its own set of legal issues (Lilley. 2006).

MySpace: A Revolutionary Link Between the People and the Cultural Industries (1/2)

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:44:07 +0000

The following article is an excerpt from a research paper I wrote in June 07 at Middlebury College.

Most online-social networks were developed with technical means in mind. In that respect, MySpace is first and foremost a commercial company that seeks to maximize its benefits through advertising. This commercial aspect has been proven even more central since the media multinational News Corporation, company of the Australian magnate Rupert Murdoch, bought Intermix, the group MySpace belongs to, in the summer of 2005. MySpace value was then estimated to US$ 327m. Why such a success?
By encouraging users to refer to popular culture, and by creating strong networks between the producers of pop culture and the consumers, MySpace is able to offer a segmented social space extremely convenient for advertisers, who massively invest in the social network: only in the categories “Fan clubs”, “Music” and “Entertainment”, there are more than 1 million users groups. The prominent place of popular culture on MySpace is facilitated by the technologies it proposes (streaming of music and videos) and the general organization of a profile page: user’s digital identities are performed through the extensive quoting of popular culture, and can easily be reduced to some aspect attached to it. In the same way Google developed a technology that enables advertisers to reach people with certain specific interests, MySpace can offer precious information about the sociological background of its users to advertising companies, since communities are organized around shared characteristics (demographics, educational background, socio-economical position but first and foremost cultural tastes).

Why the French 3-Strikes Law Might Be Unconstitutional

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:54:07 +0000

The French Government just finished writing a bill that would aim at controlling internet traffic in order to punish web users guilty of copyright infringement. The law, highly anticipated by right holders, would create a new public body in charge of sanctioning people guilty of illegal downloading. It would first warn them by sending emails and letters, and could eventually order internet service providers to suspend their internet access. The Council of State, a court of senior jurists that advises the government on legislative bills and also acts as France’s supreme court for administrative law, has reportedly modified the bill quite significantly. It sought to respond to a number of judicial requirements, such as the constitutional principle of individualization of penalties (see previous post).

The European Parliament to Advocate Media Pluralism and Blogging Transparency

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:55:11 +0000

This in-depth article by EUobserver journalist Leigh Phillips comments on a draft report of the European Parliament’s Culture Committee about concentration and media pluralism in the EU. It was adopted by the Committee on June 3rd and the report will now be submitted to the plenary assembly within the next few weeks. As stated by Phillips,

its main recommendation is for the European Commission and EU member states to apply competition law to the media to ensure media pluralism.

Its other major recommendations include the creation of media pluralism ombudspersons in the member states; the development of European core curriculum for media literacy; for the commission to ensure that regulations governing state aid not be used to undermine public service media.

The report also tackles the very latest new media developments – the ever-expanding blogosphere and increasing use by news organisations of user-generated content such as mobile video. In order that existing profession producers of content not be undersold by freely delivered but poorly produced content, the report recommends the payment of fees for use-generated content. In this way, producers or publishers would choose which content to purchase – professional or amateur – not based on which was cheapest, but which was of the highest quality.

Ms Mikko (the rapporteur) also worries that who the authors of weblogs are is not always made clear to readers, and that there are regular concerns regarding the impartiality and reliability of blogs. What is the legal situation of bloggers regarding source protection? Should they adhere to journalist ethical codes? Where is liability assiged in the event of lawsuits?

As a result, the MEP also calls for a clarification of the legal status of weblog authors and wants to see a disclosure of interests and the voluntary labelling of weblogs. Interestingly, the UK’s National Union of Journalists new media section – who recently signed up the world’s first unionised professional blogger – is currently drafting a voluntary code of conduct for bloggers that can be applied as a widget on any blog, similar to a ‘fair trade’ sticker on a bunch of bananas or packet of coffee. (Emphasis added)

Providing a status to bloggers represents a novel approach and could spark off much controversy, depending on what exactly is proposed. So far the report argues that such labeling would improve transparency by disclosing the « professional and financial responsibilities and interests of (blogs’) authors and publishers« . In spite of this regulatory stance, it is worth noting the report clearly recognizes that blogs now constitute an essential contribution to media pluralism.

Sweden and the Information Society: A Step Backward

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:18:34 +0000

Sweden is considered as a leader of the information society. The country boasts one of the best broadband networks in the world, 80% of households have an internet connection and it is heading towards progressive policies on file-sharing (thanks to rightholders in particular). In addition, Sweden has taken the transparency lead in the European Union as it has successfully convinced its partners to implement principles of government openness in the functioning of EU institutions since it entered the EU in 1995.

The Media Under Control ?

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:47:50 +0000

Here is a short review of a conference entitled “The Media Under Control” that took place at Sciences Po last thursday. The first speaker was Hervé Bourges, former director of the public TV network (France Television) among many other things. He gave an interesting account of the way French politicians, ever since De Gaulle’s presidency in the 1950’s, have exerted a strong control over the media (all State-owned) until the complete deregulation in 1986.

Policing the Net: Copyright vs. Civil Liberties

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:03:21 +0000

The battle that right-holders have been waging against P2P users has proved largely unsuccessful so far. In the US, the methods used by the recording industry’s lobby (RIAA) to track down “pirates” are put into question; in France, the penal sanctions provided by a 2006 Act on author’s rights have had no effect in stopping illegal downloading, and the digital music market is still developing extremely slowly (8% of total music sales).

Will New Media Dissolve the Political Community?

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:14:00 +0000

I just read this interesting article by Henry Jenkins, the well-known media scholar.

Even though this piece dates back to three years ago, it is still very relevant to the debate on the democratic impact that new media might have on the functioning of our democracies. Jenkins responds to some authors who bemoan the fragmentation of audiences across a wide variety of sources, arguing that the marginalization of mainstream broadcasters will undermine social cohesion and democratic participation.

Why this blog?

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:22:00 +0000

I wanted to have a sort of diary where I could write down observations and reflections about the way our society is being transformed by ICT, how they bring about social change.

I used to want to work in the music industry and grew more and more fascinated by the way the internet transforms the way people access cultural goods thus challenging traditional business models. Then I realized I liked politics too much to just focus on the music sector.

About Me

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:20:00 +0000

I’m a French student currently enrolled in the Master of Public Affairs at Sciences Po, Paris. I studied there at the undergraduate level as well, and went abroad during my senior year at Middlebury College, VT, USA.

Contact me at: felix.treguer@sciences-po.org